America's Most Controversial Pols…and Their MoJo Covers

By the time a politician appears on the cover of Mother Jones, our readers are if anything all-too-familiar with them; it's our job to present them to you in ways that are surprising, enlightening, and hopefully apt. Over the years the rogue's gallery of baby-kissers has included a confident-looking Ronald Reagan, a badly-beaten Bill Clinton, and a Hillary cover which didn't actually depict the then-presidential candidate. Take a look and see whether we've included your favorite.

Jerry Brown, July 1976: This headline-free cover represents the young Mother Jones' feeling that despite his "symbolic words and phrases," Jerry Brown, the then- (as well as now-) governor of California who was running in the 1976 Democratic presidential primaries, talked a much more progressive game than he walked. To create this image in pre-Photoshop days, the artist cut into his painting of Brown to reveal a second painting of Dwight D. Eisenhower underneath. The whole thing was then photographed. Art Director: Louise Kollenbaum; Illustrator: Dugald Stermer.